The stranger sitting at Rosie’s counter looked like he’d wandered in from the wrong century. Maybe it was the old-fashioned clothing that made him feel so out of place. His pants looked like they were made of actual animal skin; not leather like you see sometimes at big city nightclubs, but homemade. Even his shirt looked hand-sewn.
That was weird, for sure. But I think more than anything it was the expression on his face. He looked… weary. And like he very much didn’t want to be here.
Strangers came into Bauxville all the time. Tourists mostly — people wanting to go up the mountain and see the time slips for themselves. Ever since some opportunist hunting his fifteen minutes of fame went on a talk show to tell the world how a time slip had made him younger. It was all debunked, of course. But the idea persisted. Who doesn’t like the idea of getting a little free reverse aging? So the tourists came.
But this guy was just… different.
He exchanged a few quiet words with Rosie when she served him coffee, and she nodded at me where I sat with my biscuits and gravy. He looked over as I shoveled the deliciously greasy fare into my mouth, and he rose and carried his cup over. He raised a questioning brow at me as he gestured at the empty booth across from me.
I sighed, pushed in another mouthful and nodded. The man sat, seeming unbothered by my lack of manners. He sipped his coffee and sat silently watching me eat. I let him. I knew what he wanted, anyway — the same thing everyone who approached me wanted. A guide into the mountains. A guide through the time slips.
I was the best around, and everyone knew it. He’d asked, and Rosie had sent him my way. It’s the only reason anyone ever approached me.
He watched me eat, and I watched him right back. I didn’t rush my breakfast, but he never got that impatient look on his face that others did. He didn’t check his watch or grit his teeth or tap his fingers on the table. He just sat silently watching, occasionally sipping his coffee, which he seemed to appreciate. That shot him up a notch for me — Rosie makes amazing coffee. None of that cream-filled Starbucks brown water — strong, rich, black coffee.
As I scraped the last of the gravy off the plate and into my mouth, the man finally spoke. “I need a guide into the mountains.”
Polite of him to wait, I thought. I took a swig of my coffee, swirled it around and swallowed. Then another. I set the mug down and sat back with a satisfied sigh.
“Yeah. You and everyone else, pal. Rate is $500 a day. A day means 8-12 hours. No more. No less. Cash up front.”
He just nodded. I grimaced. Should’ve asked for more, but he hadn’t looked like he could afford it.
“If you wanna go today, we should head out. We can grab some supplies at the store and be headed up the mountain in forty minutes if you’re ready,” I said, already sliding out of the booth.
“I don’t need supplies,” he said calmly. “And I know where I want to go.”
“Then why do you need me?” I muttered.
I didn’t expect him to answer me, but he did. “Because I know where I want to go, but not exactly how to get there.”
My mouth opened to make a snide comment, but the more I thought about what he’d said, the more it made a strange kind of sense. The mountains were tricky, especially in the last decade since the time slips first began. If you didn’t know your way, you could end up somewhere entirely different than where you thought you were headed.
Even I’d gotten lost once or twice when I didn’t stay focused on where I was.
So I just nodded down at him. “Fine. But no one goes out there without supplies. I don’t go without supplies.”
He paused a moment, then nodded his agreement, drank the last of his coffee, and stood. “Let’s go.”
The guy — I still didn’t know his name — had nothing on him. So we hit Pine Mountain Outpost, and I picked up the basics. I got him a canteen, backpack, fresh water, non-perishable snacks, basic medkit, all that. The stuff no one should hike into the mountains without.
He pulled out a black credit card that just screamed major money and paid without any complaint. I idly wished I’d added on some new hiking boots for myself, but taking a long look at his flat expression, I was glad I hadn’t.
We loaded up my truck and headed to the trailhead. He never spoke once we left the diner. Not once. I usually prefer quiet, but this was just… unsettling.
When we arrived, we offloaded, grabbed our packs and headed up the mountain. After we’d walked about 30 minutes, I finally spoke first, “If you want me to get you somewhere specific, you gotta tell me where we’re going.”
“Gwahardd Caves.”
I flinched and stopped in the middle of the trail. “No. No one goes to Gwahardd Caves. Not anymore. People don’t come back from there.”
No one talked about it, but the last person who came back from Gwahardd came back looking 65 years old and carrying a 24-year-old’s driver’s license. She swore she’d only been gone an afternoon.
“We must,” he answered quietly, but with such finality that I felt the hair rise on the back of my neck.
For the first time in 20 years, I was afraid to be out here alone with a hiker. My hand dropped unconsciously to grip the handle of the knife I kept sheathed at my waist. The strange man’s eyes followed the motion, but he looked no more concerned than he had at any point since our first meeting.
His gaze left me and slid up the mountain ahead of us. “I have to go, and since I don’t know the way anymore, you will take me.”
I shuddered slightly at the utter certainty in his words. He wasn’t threatening me, though I felt very threatened. He was simply telling me what would happen.
“Gwahardd is dangerous,” I said, immediately hating the note of pleading I heard threaded through my statement.
“Yes,” he answered.
I desperately didn’t want to do this. But my feet were already beginning to move again, taking me further up the mountain. And a few minutes later when we hit the split in the trail, I turned east — toward Gwahardd.
We walked in silence, and eventually I realized the only sounds I could hear were our footsteps crunching the leaves on the path and the occasional wind through the trees. There was no birdsong. No insects buzzing.
I glanced over at the man as we walked, and he wasn’t even breathing hard, despite the rapid pace of our ascent. He wasn’t sweating. He looked as calm and collected as he had sitting across from me at Rosie’s.
I was afraid to ask, but I had to know.
“Who are you?”
The man quirked an eyebrow but his gaze stayed focused up the mountain. “No one that matters. Not anymore.” He paused, then added quietly. “Not in a long time.”
I gritted my teeth. “That wasn’t an answer.”
“You may call me Gwydion.”
“Still not an answer,” I muttered.
The man said nothing more. And we kept hiking.
We spent hours silently ascending the increasingly overgrown trail until it basically disappeared altogether, stopping only once or twice to catch my breath — he didn’t need to despite the thinning air. I never saw him touch his backpack or his canteen.
As we pushed our way through low-hanging branches, tall bushes, and weeds, the silence began to feel oppressive. And signs of time slips began to appear.
A giant oak so big around it must’ve been hundreds of years old blocked our path. But I knew it wasn’t there the last time I came this way. We worked our way around it. A large hickory shrank into a sapling then disappeared into the dark loam as we watched.
That one stopped me in my tracks. “This is why no one comes out toward Gwahardd,” I stuttered, fear and desperation dripping from my words as I stared at Gwydion. “You can’t predict when they’ll hit.”
He stopped and finally looked at me, truly meeting my eyes for the first time in hours. “You won’t be touched by time while you’re with me.”
I believed him. I don’t know why. No one controls the time slips. But I still believed.
We continued. We passed signs of time slips everywhere. They were growing more common than I’d ever seen them, despite having spent my entire life in these mountains. The hair rose all over my body, and every step I took raised my hackles further. The very air felt heavy with danger.
We’d been walking almost six hours when the cave mouth came into view. The degradation of the trail had made it take longer than I’d expected, but Gwydion didn’t seem impatient or concerned.
As we approached the cave’s entrance, he held up a hand. “You stay here. I go alone from here. She’ll be… angry.”
“She?”
“My sister,” he answered. “Just stay back from the entrance. And if someone else comes out before me? Stay hidden.”
I blinked. But I didn’t have time to ask any more questions as he turned and strode purposefully toward the dark opening.
I hurried back toward the treeline, hearing his voice calling out behind me. “I’m here, Ari. I’ve come to release you.”
What the actual fuck? Who’s Ari?
For the first time in this entire strange day, I wondered if the man might be truly mad. And if he was, what did that make me for believing him? That thought didn’t keep me from hiding in the trees, but it kept me close enough to watch what happened next.
It was only moments before the rumbling beneath my feet began. The earth shook so hard I fell on my ass and stayed that way. Leaves were shaken from the trees, dropping all around me like green raindrops. My stomach folded in on itself in fear, and I dropped to lie flat on my belly, letting the leaves fall over me like a blanket — like a hiding place.
Then the sound began. It started as a thin wailing, almost like a baby crying. Then it began to grow louder and deeper until it filled the world and was the only sound that had ever been or ever could be. I clutched my ears and tried to shut it out, but it was inside me — inside everything.
Rage surrounded me, a fury so deep and profound it felt like it would drown me. Betrayal. Disappointment. Hurt. Fear. Primal emotions chased one another through the world, and I was tossed by them like popcorn in oil.
It was several moments before I realized the sound was gone, and what I heard now was my own voice gibbering out apologies, begging for forgiveness over and over again. I didn’t know who I was begging or what I was guilty of, but I wanted desperately to atone. I needed forgiveness.
I forced my mouth closed, a much harder task than it ever had been before. And the world was silent again. But as I looked around, I realized I no longer saw any signs of time slips. They were just gone. The mountain around me looked… normal.
I stayed still, just watching, only my eyes moving, so I noticed right away when the figures appeared at the cave entrance. Gwydion was there, though he looked a bit worse for wear. Bloody scratches marred his cheeks, and his strange old-fashioned shirt was torn in several places. His left arm hung strangely from his shoulder, like it wasn’t attached quite right anymore.
He looked lesser. Defeated, maybe.
Then my gaze moved to his companion, and my breath stopped.
She was everything. Ari. His sister. Whoever she was, she was the most beautiful being that had ever lived, at least to my sight. Her hair hung loose and flowing down her back in a silver curtain that seemed to move on its own, some kind of inherent counterbalance to the rest of her body.
And her body had curves that seemed just the right shape, but my eyes couldn’t quite follow them. I just knew she was what all human women aspired to be.
My thoughts stuttered to a stop. Human women? Where did that thought come from? But as I stared at her, I knew it was correct. She was not human.
They were walking toward me. Or rather, he was walking toward me, his head hanging low, his steps a bit staggered. She seemed to be gliding as though moving on ice. As they approached, I realized she had no face, or not one I could see. Instead a gentle white light seemed to shine from where her face should be — like moonlight on water.
I couldn’t have moved if I wanted to as they approached. They didn’t seem to need to look for me, but walked directly to where I lay still and silent, buried beneath a thick quilt of leaves. Gwydion crouched near my head and waited. The woman — his sister? — stood behind him.
Slowly, I forced myself to sit up. And as her face lowered and her gaze met mine — though I couldn’t see her eyes, I knew she was looking into mine — something changed in me.
Every ache that I’d carried so long I didn’t notice it anymore was simply gone in an instant. Hair fell into my eyes for the first time in over a decade, since my hairline had receded in my 20s. My vision grew sharper, details of the world coming into focus that I hadn’t even realized I’d been missing.
I was still me, but a different me — the me I’d been 20 years earlier when I’d just been starting out in life.
“A gift,” she said in a melodious voice so sweet it brought involuntary tears to my eyes. “To thank you for leading my brother to me.”
I swallowed hard, then choked on my own saliva. Classic.
They waited while I coughed and tried to pull myself together. Finally, I pushed out a word, “Who…?”
She was smiling. I somehow knew it. “You may call me Ari.”
But I couldn’t do that. She was something more than a simple name. It would be disrespectful.
“Thank you, ma’am.”
I stood, intending to lead them back down the mountain. But by the time I was upright, they were just… gone.
An exhaustive search of the area turned up no sign of the pair and no sign of any time slips. Eventually, I made my own way back to town. I was received with some fanfare; the first time Rosie saw me, she dropped a coffee pot. Everyone blamed my newly youthful appearance on a time slip, though there hasn’t been another one seen since.
All that was 72 years ago. And I’m as young today as I was the day I led Gwydion to the cave and met his sister. I’ve done my research since then, and I think I know now who they were. Are. Because I’m sure they’re still out there.
Whether she forgave him is something I’ll never know, but I think about it often. I don't know exactly when my gratitude became reverence that morphed into devotion. I only know I will worship her until I die, and it looks like that may be a very long time from now.
Author’s Note: Gwydion and Ari are not mine. Check out the Mabinogion. In it, Gwydion engineers his sister Arianrhod's public shame and spends the rest of the myth out-tricking the curses she lays on her son in revenge. There’s no reconciliation in the original. This is the ending I wanted to give them.
Also, in honor of Bradley Ramsey’s love of an included musical inspiration, here’s mine:
‼️ If you liked this, check out some of my other short stories.
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